Hyperskeptic,
I just wanted to chip in that I found your thoughts on relationships, especially friendship versus romance, very interesting.

I have found myself thinking on similar terms as you have - the boundaries between 'romantic' and 'inter-personal but non-sexual' friendship are often blurry for me. Wanting to get to know a person, spend more time with them, build a more intimate connection - may not be linked to physical desire but may, apart from that, resemble what society would classify as 'romantic' goals quite clearly. This is not always easy to understand for others and makes ''the talk'' of confessing feelings to others even more daunting and confusing in some ways. (So go you for getting it over with, even if it may have been somewhat late). For me, in practice, this often at least means that I try to show my closest friends how much they mean to me in all sorts of ways short of actually saying 'I love you'.

I mean, I chose my friends because they are awesome people, of course I would be attracted to them in some way or other too?
Being pansexual doesn't help limiting this in any way! (assuming that strightly hetero or homosexual persons could at least cancel out some of this love-romance-friendship confusion since presumably they wouldn't be attracted to their same-sex//different-sex friends), but luckily polyamory provides at least some sort of solution.